Chapter Text
Theresa remembered her childhood summers in the vague swirls of colour and noise that everything came down to in the end: glimpses of the palace gardens in full bloom, and of the cool, high walls she would lean up against on hot days; the swish-swish of Fraulein Margot's skirts which meant she was coming to call Theresa to her lessons. The first chimes of laughter from her bouncing baby sister, Hélène, and later the twins, not nearly so good-tempered, desperately trying to outdo each other with their crescendo screams.
The earliest year she recalled with any clarity was 1987 - not that the figure itself meant anything to her, but that was the summer she was six years old, and it was the year Cousin Stefan arrived in her life.
Theresa was constantly beset by Cousins - people of varying ages to whom she was reliably informed she was related somehow, although usually she wasn't told which branch of the family tree they had descended from. She suspected that very few of them were actually her cousins, and indeed she knew of a few who certainly weren't: for instance, Cousin Cecelia was actually her aunt, being the youngest daughter of Theresa's maternal grandmother. Since Theresa was the elder of the two by almost a year, it would have seemed idiotic to call her 'Aunt Cecelia', so 'Cousin' it was. Cousin Victor, on the other hand, was an old, old man - a friend of Theresa's late great-grandfather who bore no actual blood relation to House Gustava, but whom everyone called 'Cousin', upon his own insistence.
There had been no explanation for Cousin Stefan, however, and he'd arrived on the very first day of June, along with his mother, who introduced herself to Theresa as Aunt Lucille. One of the staff had evidently brought them into the castle, and then gone off to find the King - they were still waiting to be officially received when Theresa happened upon them, standing in the entrance hall.
Cousin Stefan was Theresa's own height, and similarly dark-haired and dark-eyed, though he was dressed in much simpler, more comfortable clothing than she. The two children stared at one another from across the marbled floor. Theresa, for her part, had spied the small model car Cousin Stefan was holding in one curled fist, and wondered how well it would balance, if one were to set it on the bannister at the top of the grand stairway and send it whizzing down to the ground floor.
Of course, such silliness would be frowned upon, but this only strengthened Theresa's resolve to make it happen.
When Theresa's father eventually appeared, he stared at Aunt Lucille as if stunned, and Theresa marvelled at this, because she had always been told that staring was very rude, and unbecoming of a princess. She wished she were a king instead, able to stare at whomever and whatever she liked.
"Lucille," said Father, eventually. "You're here."
Aunt Lucille nodded. "I thought it was time."
Father followed her gaze down to Cousin Stefan. "Yes," he said, and then once more, "yes." He turned to address Theresa, and for a split-second she froze, wondering if she was about to be lectured about hanging around and eavesdropping again. But instead, Father said, "Theresa, my dear. Take your cousin up to the nursery and show him your toys."
Theresa's eyes lit up, and so did Cousin Stefan's. She beckoned him to follow her, and scurried up the stairs, not pausing to wonder until a long time afterward, exactly what conversation her father had wanted to exclude them from. At the time, it was far too exciting to have somebody to play with to think about such things.
The copious number of dolls in the nursery didn't seem to perturb Cousin Stefan, but Theresa saw him notice the model aeroplanes hanging from the ceiling, and she stood on one of the toy boxes to take a couple down. "Aeroplanes are my favourite," she confided, handing him one of them. "Let's have a race."
Together, they made the aeroplanes fly across the room, not caring that they tripped and crashed into obstacles as they went, watching only to see whose plane was flying highest. Theresa's arm was just a little longer than Cousin Stefan's, which gave her an edge, but he was somewhat faster, so she admitted defeat somewhere in the fourth lap of the nursery. "Do you like aeroplanes too?" she asked, as they both collapsed onto the colourful rug.
Cousin Stefan nodded. "My father was a pilot."
Theresa smiled in approval. "So was my father, once. Before he had to be the king."
Cousin Stefan frowned, "Hasn't he always been the king as well?"
She giggled. "No! Babies can't be kings, can they? He had to start being the king when grandfather went to heaven. When I was two."
"What are you now?"
"Six. What are you?"
He considered. "Nearly seven."
Theresa poked him with the wing of her plane. "So, six, silly."
Cousin Stefan pursed his lips. "But I'm older than you."
"How do you know?"
"My mother told me."
This seemed to be a strange thing for Aunt Lucille to have told Cousin Stefan before they'd met, but Theresa would not have pondered on it long, had Cousin Stefan not added next, "It's why we've come."
"What?"
But Cousin Stefan didn't explain any further, and Theresa got the impression that he didn't know what he meant any more than she did. Why on earth would one go and visit a cousin just because one was older than them? It seemed a very stupid reason, but then grownups were always doing things Theresa found to be stupid.
Quickly, the moment of curiosity passed, and they returned to their games. Most of them centred around aeroplanes in some way, since this was the summer during which Theresa's obsession with flying had first taken hold of her, and she could think of very few imaginary games that didn't involve her being a pilot somehow. The game they most enjoyed that day was one where Cousin Stefan stood atop two toy boxes piled on top of each other, and called out left-right-forwards-backwards instructions to Theresa, the aeroplane, guiding her in and out of the furniture and attempting not to steer her into the wall, with varying results. They swapped positions a few times, and continued to play until Fraulein Margot appeared in the doorway, frowning crossly at them. "The King is expecting you downstairs, Theresa," she said. "Do tidy your hair. You look like a street urchin, after all that charging about."
"Good," whispered Theresa so that only Cousin Stefan could hear. He giggled into his hands, but under Fraulein Margot's stern glare, he hopped down from the stacked toy boxes and followed Theresa into the corridor.
They endured a terribly boring lunch, alleviated only by the fact that they were seated opposite one another, and with a good deal of stretching, could kick one another under the table. Theresa wasn't sure if it seemed more boring than usual because they'd been having so much fun upstairs, or if it was because Father and Aunt Lucille were not speaking normally to each other - rather, they were stilted and strange, as though they were shy, and Kings were never shy, Theresa knew.
Afterwards, they were dismissed again, but not before Father had instructed Franz to tell the maids to make up two bedrooms in the east wing, because, he said, "Lucille and the boy will be summering here with us."
Theresa and Cousin Stefan exchanged excited grins over the table, and thus began the first of the three best summers of Theresa's early life.
Looking back, and knowing the truth, it was remarkable that it took three years for her mother to snap.